Gavin Aung Than - Creative Struggle: Illustrated Advice from Masters of Creativity

Zen Pencils - Creative Struggle: Illustrated Advice from Masters of Creativity copyright 2018 by Gavin Aung Than. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4494-8861-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949987

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Contents

Introduction

Self-doubt, imposter syndrome, procrastination, creative block, fearthese are roadblocks regular creative people deal with every day. But what about the masters? The creative titans of history. The icons. Surely they never had to waste time with those barriers, right? Wrong. They were just as insecure as the rest of us. Just as prone to doubt, depression, addiction, and perfectionism. But they were able to overcome their inner-critic and ended up using their creativity to change the world. You might not have such a lofty goal, but, hey, its nice to know youre not alon e.

It constantly remains a source of disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome at once. To make progress is a kind of miners work; it doesnt advance as quickly as one would like, and as others also expect, but as one stands before such a task, the basic necessities are patience and faithfulness.

--Vincent van Gogh

N ot many others have struggled more for their art than Vincent van Gogh. Although he had a passion for art since a child, Van Goghs first career choice was to become a minister. After studying for a year, Van Gogh failed his entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam and later the Church of Belgium. Unable to join the church, Van Gogh decided he would devote himself to art. Although his work was exhibited in his later years, he received no recognition for his art during his life, lived in constant poverty, and died having only sold one of his paintings.

Van Gogh was the epitome of the tortured artist. He lived a desperately sad life filled with disappointment. Besides failing to become a minster, Van Gogh had a disastrous love life, his friendships never lasted (after threatening friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin with a razor blade, Van Gogh famously cut off his own earlobe), and his art career never went anywhere. He even failed at committing suicidewhen Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a pistol, the bullet missed his vital organs, and he was able to walk back to his house where he rested and smoked his pipe. He eventually died the next day after an infection took hold.

Van Gogh was in and out of mental asylums his whole life, and its unsure whether or not he suffered from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, or some other kind of mental illness. Throughout all the difficulties in his life, the only thing that gave Van Gogh any kind of peace was the passion he had for his art:

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony, and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven toward these things with an irresistible momentum.

The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.

--Albert Einstein

A lbert Einstein was desperate. After graduating with a teaching diploma in 1900, he was having a hard time finding a job as an assistant professor. With a child on the way, Einstein survived with the help of his parents and the odd tutoring job. Finally, after two years of jobless despair, a friend managed to hook him up with a job at the Swiss Federal Office for Intellectual Property assessing patents. It wasnt the academic job he was hoping for, but at this point, Einstein was just happy to have found work.

There, Einstein would have the seven most creative years of his life. The patent office duties were a breeze and he could get a full days work done in two or three hours. That allowed him to work on his own physics ideas for the rest of the day. It was while in this job, in 1905, that the twenty-six-year-old unknown amateur physicist produced the greatest MVP season of any physicist in history, publishing four papers that changed the world, including his theory of special relativity. Its now known as Einsteins miracle year.

Most of Einsteins important discoveries came from what he called Gedankenexperiments, which were visual thought experiments. What would it be like riding along a beam of light? What if two lightning bolts struck a moving train simultaneously? It was in 1907, while working at the patent office, where Einstein had his favorite: If a person falls freely, he would not feel his own weight. Scientific lore has it that Einstein actually saw a man fall while looking out his office window. The idea led him to a further thought experiment: If the falling man was in an enclosed elevator that had its cord cut he would experience weightlessness. But his experience would be no different from a man floating in an enclosed chamber in outer space. If the elevator was stationary on earth, the man would be inside standing normally. But if the chamber in space was pulled upward at the same acceleration as Earths gravity, again, there would be no difference felt by the man inside. Therefore, there was no difference between the effects of gravity and acceleration.